One goal of lab-on-a-chip research is to miniaturize and/or scale biological and chemical instruments into chip formats. Such instruments usually require, or rely on, the handling of liquids samples such as blood, urine, on liquid reagents, and/or the like. Therefore, it is desirable for lab-on-a-chip systems to have built-in liquid handling capabilities to achieve self-contained sample processing capabilities. However, due to various challenges, few handheld, self-contained systems capable of complex liquid handling exist in the market today.